Christian Smith picked two of his teeth up from the Crawley Center floor, walked to the Frankfort bench and asked for a towel.

The Hot Dogs junior guard had dove for a loose ball in the fourth quarter of a J&C Hoops Classic semifinal against West Lafayette. Smith took a smack to the head in the process, dislodging those teeth and leaving a bloody scrape on his chin.

With the talented Hot Dogs holding a double-digit lead, Smith could take his time returning to play, or possibly take the rest of the night off, right?

Nope. One play later, Smith was back on the floor.

“I’m ready to play basketball,” said Smith, who scored eight points in the final four minutes, after the game. “The teeth will be there.”

Class 3A No. 10 Frankfort set a physical tone early and made it stand up in a 58-43 victory over West Lafayette. The Hot Dogs advanced to their second J&C Hoops Classic championship and first since 2008, when they lost to Jesse Berry-led Lafayette Jeff.

“Especially in the fourth quarter, all our guys are willing to put their bodies on the line,” said Frankfort senior Dakota Isgrigg, who joined Smith and Nathan Wissman with a game-high 14 points. “I think everybody, I can say, is willing to die for this team; to just put all they can out on the floor. Like coach says, ‘Never leave anything on the floor,’ unless it’s a couple of teeth, I guess.”

West Lafayette (2-1), last year’s runner-up, was trying to return to the championship game. Justus Stanback led the Red Devils (2-1) with 12 points, but the 6-foot-7 Isgrigg helped limit the 6-8 IUPUI signee to 4-of-18 shooting.

West Lafayette shot 33.3 percent from the field overall and trailed by double digits most of the second half.

“I thought they stayed with what they did better; guarded us better,” West Lafayette coach Dave Wood said. “Their bigger guys went at us all night, and ours didn’t always do that.

“If our success is going to match our talent level, we have to find more grit. We’ve talked freely about that. I said I felt like the toughest team was going to win, and I think the toughest team did win.”

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Isgrigg said he looked forward to matching up against the Division I-bound Stanback. Though forced to the bench with four fouls in the second half, Isgrigg grabbed a team-high eight rebounds and kicked out four assists.

“Dakota played like a man tonight,” Smith said. “We need him playing like that every night.”

Nathan Wissman hit a pair of 3s to open the second half, expanding Frankfort’s eight-point halftime lead to 14. West Lafayette pulled within 11 with 4:13 to play, but Smith shrugged off his wounds and scored on the next two possessions to push the lead back to 52-37.

Frankfort jumped out to a 16-0 lead on Clinton Prairie in its season opener, and scored the first 14 points in Monday’s quarterfinal victory over Benton Central.

The Hot Dogs continued that trend against West Lafayette, taking a 9-0 lead and never trailing. Conversely, the Red Devils have trailed at the end of the first quarter in all three of their games this season.

“With all three of our games this year, it seems like we’ve kind of dug ourselves into a hole right from the get-go,” said West Lafayette senior Brian Bangs, who posted 10 points and nine rebounds. “Coming ready to play each game is something we need to do.”